1970's Frisbee Becomes a Sport
Guts, Ultimate, Freestyle, Golf, Distance, Accuracy, MTA, Self Caught Flight, Discathon and Double Disc Court became this sports first events.
There are certain
people that stand out when acknowledging who laid the ground
work for the transition of playing with the Frisbee as a toy to disc sports. The Healy family (Guts),
Tom Kennedy (Ultimate and UPA), Ken Westerfield (Utimate, Freestyle and Canadian Open),
Jim Kenner (Freestyle and Canadian Open), Dave Marinni (FPA),
Jim Palmeri (AFDO),
Tom Schot (Santa Cruz Tournaments), Dan Roddick ( IFA and WFDF),
Ed Headrick (Whamo and Disc Golf), Joel Silver (Ultimate). These are
people that not only excelled with the Frisbee when it was still considered a toy, but help create the formats and concepts through their own tournaments and or organizations that produced the events and organization of disc sports we see today.
The Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Toronto
Canada (the beginning of Freestyle Competition), American Flying Disc Open (AFDO), Rochester, NY, Octad, New
Jersey, International Frisbee Tournament (IFT), Marquette, MI, Santa Cruz Flying Disc Classic, Santa Cruz, California, and the World Frisbee Championships (WFC), held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, were the most progressive and trend setting tournaments of that time. These tournaments are where the sport of Frisbee ( disc sports ) really began.
